The Gray Suit
by mariu100
Summary: Booth's grandfather is extremely ill, and Brennan must decide how best to help her husband during the crisis, a man who rarely allows anyone to see how much the suffering of those he loves affects him.
1. Bad News on a Hot Day

Same as always, the crime scene was organized chaos of the highest order. There were FBI team members everywhere, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the Jeffersonian staff in a friendly race to get first dibs on the gruesome evidence floating around in the half-empty pool.

Bubbling up actually, rather than just merely floating; the corpse they were collectively trying to piece back together had long ago disintegrated into globs of frothing, eerily sentient reddish/brown goo which now coated the sides and covered the surface of the abandoned swimming pool.

To make the already unpleasant experience even more unappealing, the morass of remains was completely overridden by flies, mosquitoes and other extremely persistent, winged critters with a relentless thirst for human blood. The insects unerringly kept finding their way to any millimeter of exposed flesh-both dead and living-in the vicinity of the pool, bringing even more suffering to those laboring away on the premises.

Brennan, Hodgins and Cam had it slightly better than most of their colleagues. They stood at the edge of the rectangular depression in full protective gear, leaning in and using sieves attached to the ends of poles to collect what had coalesced on the top while a large, noisy wet-vac supplied by the FBI sucked the filthy water underneath into special collection vats.

Only when the pool was empty could Brennan get to the one thing that was of any interest to her: the victim's bones. Without them, it was impossible to determine the age or cause of death of the aggrieved person whose molecules were now so widely dispersed, let alone his or her identity. This much they already knew: faint blood spatters found directly under one of the eaves of the rundown mansion pointed to a likelihood of foul play for the victim rather than to just a harmless, if still unfortunate, accidental drowning.

Booth was right there in the middle of things, suffering along with everyone else who didn't have the luxury of full-body armor protection. He was doing what what he could to make the best out of the unpleasant situation, but nothing was really helping.

It was all rather comical, Brennan thought as she glanced back at him. He had a handkerchief pressed firmly over his mouth and nose while he searched the unkempt grounds for clues, waiving his free hand back and forth in front of him like a mad man in a losing effort to keep the little biting pests at bay. She noted that he looked utterly miserable, and she unconsciously shook her head in amusement at the fact that her work partner/husband could still be so fastidious to the point of prissiness after all these years of being out in the field. Three months she had spent in a sweltering, insect-filled Amazon jungle, without a single complaint.

"God, that is...really disgusting" Booth said, nearing the group and carefully peering into the pool while keeping the rest of his body as far away from it as he logistically could, in the unlikely but not impossible event that he got dizzy and fell in.

Yes, dizzy, because he found both the stench and the visuals unbearably revolting now that the full humid heat of late spring had descended without mercy on the D.C. area. He'd loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt against regs along with many of the other agents in an attempt to make the 98 plus heat more tolerable, but it wasn't working. Every inch of his shirt was soaked, exactly as if someone had poured a bucket of tepid water over his head, and the sweat just kept coming, trickling in little streams down his back and sopping the waistband of his pants and underwear.

He wasn't going to dwell on the swampy state of his lower half.

"How long do you guys think the victim's been in there?" he asked, mindful to keep his mouth covered.

Hodgins straightened up and stretched his cramped arm and back muscles before looking at the perspiring agent through the foggy visor of his hazmat hood.

"Judging from the wide range of insect life feasting on our friend, I would say at least two weeks," his distorted voice replied. "I'll have to check weather patterns and other relevant factors during the last month or two to be sure though; depending on how hot it got and how many times it rained, the time might be shorter-or longer. Figuring out evaporation rates will also help; organic matter from the deceased starts about a foot and a half up on the wall from where the current water level is at."

"Well, that lines up with the statement the former owner gave us. The house was foreclosed on by a mortgage company about two months ago; the family upped and left without bothering to do anything with the property-including emptying the pool-which apparently was full when they took off. No one from the bank has checked up on things since the foreclosure. The slime starts about a third down the walls, so the family was probably gone a couple of weeks before the body found its way in here, given how much water was already missing."

"Who called it in?" Cam inquired. "The walls around the property are pretty high and the nearest house looks abandoned too."

Booth swatted away at a mosquito which had made a painful landing on his ear.

"Neighborhood association. It stinks so bad, you can smell it all the way down the street. And then there were the bugs everywhere. Someone climbed up a tree on the sidewalk next to the property to look in figuring all the stuff was coming from this yard, and when they saw _that_" he said, turning his face away in disgust, "they called the police right away."

"I don't understand why you seem so uncomfortable, Booth," Brennan lectured. "You've seen countless human remains in far worse states of decomposition than this before-you should be perfectly accustomed to working under these conditions" she added, deriding his extreme sensitivity by singling out his handkerchief with a black-gloved hand.

"Sure, easy for you to say when you've got a hazmat suit covering your entire body and there aren't millions of bugs making kamikaze runs straight for your mouth. I hate to think where they've been..." He muttered that last part, closing his eyes tight and crinkling his nose.

"We may be covered, but we're basically turkeys basting in our own juices in these things-it's not like they're air-conditioned" Hodgins replied unsympathetically. "No picnic in here, dude-I'd rather be out there with you, communing with the flying lovelies one-on-one."

_The flying lovelies._

Booth shook his head. The people he worked with...He was debating whether it was worth his breath to comment out loud on how supremely weird the entomologist was, when his cell phone rang. He wiggled it out of his damp pocket without giving it much thought.

And then he saw the caller id.

"Booth" he answered automatically, without thinking about the repercussions of letting go of that life-saving handkerchief.

Brennan watched him repeatedly spit out whatever had gotten into his mouth as a result of this momentary lapse, and she smiled in spite of herself at Booth's quirky little phobias, which included not only bugs, but clowns and hard-boiled eggs potentially lurking in meat loaf.

The bravest man in the world stymied by a gnat.

Her eyes continued to stay on him long after they should have because something told her all was not as it should be, and she noticed with curiosity that his expression began to change as the conversation progressed. He became increasingly somber as he listened with concerned eyes and a creased forehead to whatever the caller was saying, nodding a few times with an occasional "uh huh" and "okay" sprinkled in, but little else by way of communication. He looked serious in a way she immediately knew, after years of working and living with him, not to be work-related.

Forgetting all about her part in the collection of the remains, she put the pole down, doing her best to listen in on his end of the conversation. Unfortunately, her mate wound up walking away to avoid the winged infestation buzzing with single-minded insistence around his head, and she missed out on his final reply.

As soon as he turned around, she knew whatever news he'd gotten wasn't good.

"Is something wrong with either Christine or Joseph?" she asked, the mothering instinct in her inexorably honing in on the possibility that her children were in some sort of distress.

"No."

"Parker?" she tried again, when he wouldn't extrapolate.

Booth shook his head.

Brennan was preparing to lay into him for his sudden tight-lippedness, until she noticed how shell-shocked he looked. Once she saw his face, she made her way over to her partner in a much more generous frame of mind-but still determined to get more than just a few undecipherable grunts out of him. Removing the hood of her suit to showcase bright pink, damp features, and tendrils of hair that were stuck to her cheeks and temples, she turned and looked him in the eye.

"Booth, please tell me, what's wrong? Is it Max?" she asked, as his anxiety wafted over to her and filled her with a sense of dread.

"Pops" he replied in an agitated voice, handkerchief and bugs forgotten. "They just took him away in an ambulance-he was having a hard time breathing and they didn't want to take any chances. The lady at the nursing home said he had a cold and was coughing for a couple of days. You know how he is" he said, shaking his head and frowning, like a parent having just been informed of a child's bad behavior at school. "He kept telling the aides it was no big deal, but this morning he apparently didn't look so good. They asked him what was wrong, and he finally admitted his chest had been hurting for a while. Listen Bones-I gotta go. Do you mind riding back to the lab with those guys" he asked, looking towards Hodgins and Cam. "I really need to check up on Pops-they're taking him to Washington General, and I don't want him to be all by himself in that place."

Hank-naturally, she should have thought of him. The oversight made Brennan feel guilty.

Booth's grandfather was elderly, and as active as he kept, he was also rather frail. Much frailer than he let anyone believe. He was plagued by high-blood pressure, the early stages of diabetes, and an increasingly weakened immune system. None of those conditions were surprising in a man of his age, but they made any illness much more difficult to treat, particularly if it had had some time to sit around and fester.

"Of course I don't mind," she reassured her husband gently. "Go; I'll join you as soon as I can. You should be with your grandfather-don't worry about anything else. We'll make certain that all the information from the crime scene is catalogued and recorded properly so you can review it later. Sweets can give it to you when you have time to read it."

"But what about picking up the kids and..."

"I'll take care of that."

He looked at his wife with a smile of thanks before craning his neck and giving his troops one last look-over.

Completely on impulse, Brennan went up on her toes and gave him a short, tender kiss on the lips.

She judged that he needed one.

"Go."

"Okay" he answered, before turning away and walking towards his car; but Brennan knew that while his body was still near her, his mind and heart were already there, wherever Hank was. It could be no other way for Booth. When it came to friends and those under his care, he would drop everything to do what he felt was right by them.

For Booth is was family first-always.


	2. Asking for Favors

Booth hadn't even put his key in the ignition when his phone rang again. This time, he saw that the call was coming straight from the hospital.

"Yes? he replied nervously, foregoing the usual terse 'Booth' that accompanied just about every one of his greetings.

A female voice, calm and professional, came through.

"Good morning; my name is Lisa Freeman. I'm an admitting physician over at Washington General Hospital. I need to speak to Seeley Booth, Henry Booth's grandson. Is he available?"

"Yeah-that's me; did anything happen?" Booth asked, his free hand involuntarily reaching for the steering wheel and grabbing on to it for dear life.

_God, please don't let them tell me that Pops..._

"Sir, we have your grandfather here at triage in the emergency room of Washington General; he was just brought over by ambulance from his nursing home-I'm sure his caregivers already contacted you about that. He's having a difficult time breathing. His oxygen saturation levels are very low and he's really struggling for air. We've determined that Mr. Booth's lungs are heavily congested and because of that, we want to put him on a ventilator to ease the strain on his system, but he's absolutely refusing. He says he doesn't want any type of breathing tube inserted down his throat or any machinery attached to him. Since you're the nearest of kin, I was hoping you could speak to your grandfather and try to get him to change his mind. Due to the fact that at the moment he's fully conscious and in possession of all his faculties, we can't perform the procedure without his consent."

"I'll talk to him."

A second later, Booth heard loud wheezing on the other end of the line.

"Pops?"

"Seeley;" his grandfather's voice sounded exactly like air did when it was steadily escaping out of a balloon.

"Listen Pops. This isn't the time to get all argumentative with the people taking care of you. They tell me you need that breathing tube; please let them put you on that respirator. It's for your own good" he told him firmly. "I'm on my way over right now. But please let them get things going."

"No; I don't want it."

The old man paused, taking several gasping breaths before starting up again. "They put one of those danged things in my brother Frank, and in my pal Chuck at the nursing home." Another fight for air. "Didn't do either of them any good, and they were miserable the whole time right til the moment they died. Just let me go, son" he begged, sounding incredibly tired.

"Hey Pops" Booth said, softening his tone, "please hand the phone back to doctors. I want to talk to them for a second."

There was a prolonged round of coughing in the background as the phone was exchanged.

Booth knew everything you needed to know about respirators or ventilators or whatever they were calling them these days; he'd been through the hell they were more than once himself. The last one he didn't remember, because it had been taken out before he'd regained consciousness, but he was certainly familiar with how much his throat hurt even after the tracheal tube was gone. The other time, and the times he'd seen pals with them-those-well, how could anyone forget the experience? The contraptions were horribly uncomfortable, even under sedation. You couldn't talk or swallow, your mouth and lips were always parched as a desert and even though the device technically helped you breathe, you felt like you were choking the whole time. It killed him to think of poor old Pops, full of so many aches and pains already, going through the ordeal of having one of those put in, and then being forced to live with it in place for days if not weeks.

"Yes, Mr. Booth."

"I just want to ask you something. Is it really _absolutely_ necessary for my grandfather to have that thing jammed down his throat?"

As bad as the situation was, he was at least grateful that the medical person on the other end seemed to be so patient and willing to explain things to him. He just wished that Bones was here beside him, because she would immediately figure out if whatever scientific mumbo-jumbo he was being fed was strictly the facts.

"I'm going to be very candid with you, Mr. Booth," the doctor replied in a confidential but no-nonsense manner; "in the shape he's currently in, your grandfather won't make it through the night without the help of a ventilator. We're going to start him on antibiotics immediately on the assumption that the respiratory problems we're seeing stem from a bacterial infection, but those won't begin to work for at least six hours-best case scenario-and even then there might only be a slight change in his condition, at best. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours is where we typically see them starting to do any good. He doesn't have that long, I can categorically tell you that."

The brutally frank assessment made the choice clearer, but still far from perfect.

"And if he gets it, will that pull him through? How long will he need it for?"

"I wish I could say but as you probably know, there are no guarantees in medicine; I can only tell you that if he doesn't allow us to do this, he won't make it. At least the breathing apparatus gives him and us a fighting chance until the medication starts working. As to how long he'll need it for, the timing depends entirely on how well the infection responds to antibiotics. Could be a couple of days, but maybe longer. If there's even a small amount of improvement, we might be able to switch him to an intra-nasal tracheal tube, which is far more comfortable for the patient."

Booth made up his mind.

"I'd like to speak to my grandfather one more time, please."

"Pops..."

"Not getting it" the man replied weakly, but as stubbornly as ever.

"If you have the procedure, there's a decent chance you'll get better in a little while. You heard what the doctor said-without it, things don't look so good."

"I never wanted to go with all that crap inside me; I've told you that before."

"You're not going anywhere, Pops. That's the point. And it's only temporary, 'til the drugs kick in."

There was silence, and Booth took that as a positive sign that Pops was beginning to buckle.

He went straight for the jugular while he still could.

"Do it for me, Pops; for me and for Jared and your great-grandkids. Parker loves you; Christine is only three, and Joseph isn't even one. His birthday's in one week-you can't miss that; we named the little guy after you."

It was the truth-they had. Even though everyone knew Pops as Hank Booth, his full name was Joseph Henry Booth, same as his deceased son's. Booth had battled Brennan on the name because it was his father's and as much as she had tried to make him recall the rare good times they'd shared together, there were still many grim memories about his old man that just wouldn't die down, but it was also she who'd reminded him that it was part of his grandfather's name too as well as a part of his own, and that family history-all of it-was important. To sweeten the pot, she'd gone on to point out that the name 'Joseph' was full of religious significance, and that it would give him a constant link to his faith.

So the bickering continued, almost until the minute their son began crowning. Even as she was pushing, Brennan argued that they had named Christine after her mother, and that now she wanted something to represent Booth's lineage. And no way would Seeley cut it; that one he wasn't going for, absolutely no way. One person in the family laboring under the weight of such an offbeat name was more than enough.

As happened way more often than not ever since he'd known her, he had given in to her hammering, irrefutable logic-and her unyielding love.

And now that their little boy was called Joseph, Booth found he couldn't like the moniker more. Oddly enough, it had even made him come to think more affectionately of his own dad in the process.

Bones somehow always knew how to make things better for him even when he couldn't find a way to do it for himself; and here strangers were always commenting on how she lacked empathy and people skills. The criticism continually made him angry on her behalf.

Hank remained silent.

"For me, Pops, please" Booth pleaded, reverting back to a time when Pops had been his whole world and he and Jared had been his. When Pops had been more than willing to do anything for his two young, emotionally and physically battered grandsons, because they had almost nothing and no one left to hang their hats on.

"Alright," he heard Hank say in a crest-fallen voice. "Just for you-and the kids."

"Thank you. I love you Pops; I'll be right there."

He drove to the hospital with the siren on and a huge lump in his throat, hoping he'd done the right thing by strong-arming Pops into having the painful, highly invasive procedure.

As the doctor said, only time would tell.

He only knew that he wasn't ready to lose the man he loved more than almost anyone else in this world. Not yet; not without at least putting in his two cents' worth with the Almighty first.


	3. Matters of the Heart

By the time Brennan reached the hospital, Hank had already been admitted, preliminarily diagnosed with a case of bacterial pneumonia. She knew the odds in his favor weren't the best.

She identified herself at the reception desk of the surgical floor, and asked whether the intubation procedure was over-the one Booth told her he had browbeat his grandfather into getting.

The one which might be Pop's only remaining life-line.

"Ma'am, Mr. Booth is still in the operating room. They should be done with him anytime now," the lady at the desk told her. "The waiting area for relatives is just down the hall."

Brennan quickened her pace.

She'd done everything within her power to get to the hospital earlier in order to be with Booth when the surgeon first came to speak with him about the logistics of the procedure, but it just didn't work out. It went without saying that in stressful situations of a personal nature, her husband wasn't always the best at listening with any attention to detail-especially when it came to medical parlance. She was his eyes and ears in that department, and he had to be feeling lost without her in the impersonal, foreign hospital setting given where his mind was at.

She recalled the time he had his brain surgery, which even to this day, he knew almost nothing about. He was pleading with her to go into the OR with him because he wasn't sure what they were doing inside his head, and as he put it, she would know if they 'messed up'.

She wouldn't really know, not to the extent Booth was giving her credit for because she wasn't a neurologist, but she stayed anyway. If nothing else, at least to give him some peace of mind.

Of more recent vintage, the incident with Parker's broken arm had only reaffirmed the notion that Booth didn't cope well with medical emergencies-not when family was involved.

He'd been out of his mind with worry over his son, repeatedly interrupting the pediatric orthopedist in the emergency room with questions about future mobility issues while railing against both the very large player on the opposing football team who caused the injury and the boy's admittedly annoying bully of a coach. In the end, it took all her reasoning skills to calm Booth down and convince him that this particular type of game-inflicted injury was extremely common, typically accidental, and unlikely to have any material future impact on the use of Parker's arm.

She couldn't have reached Booth any sooner if she had wings, though.

Before she could make her way over to him, she had to finish collecting the evidence at the pool and then arrange for Hodgins and Angela to pick Christine up from preschool and Joseph from the Jeffersonian's daycare. After that, she raced home to let their dog out, grabbing toothbrushes and changes of clothes for her kids, just in case, as she waited for Ripley Jr. to do his business in the back yard.

A quick stop back at the Jeffersonian with the kids' supplies and an on-the-run call to the dog-walker, and she was finally in a position to head to the hospital.

She and Booth were very fortunate to have such good, loyal friends in their lives, she acknowledged. As soon as they heard about Hank, Angela and Hodgins immediately offered to watch their two children and to keep them overnight if that was what was required of them. It was definitely an imposition, of course, even when it was being done with a genuine smile; the couple had an extremely active little boy of their own to contend with. But since Max was out of town on one of his many mysterious outings, she was left with little other choice.

Brennan finally found Booth sitting by himself in a corner of the ICU's waiting area, head hanging down and hands knitted tightly together on his lap. He looked spent and fairly disheveled, with his tie askew and his shirt wrinkled and still unbuttoned at the top; he also looked incredibly sad. A five-o'clock shadow was starting to darken his cheeks making them look hollow, and she noticed that the swarm of mosquitoes from this afternoon had definitely left their vicious imprint on him, in the form of nickel-sized pink welts all over his neck and ears. She made a mental note to put ointment on them as soon as they got home so he didn't wind up scratching them bloody.

The second he sensed she was nearby he stood up, his drawn face immediately lighting up.

It had been a lonely, nail-biting four and a half hours since he'd gotten here.

"Hey Bones. Thanks for coming."

"You don't need to thank me, Booth. I wanted to be here, for you and for Hank. How is he doing?"

"Not too well" Booth replied, trying to keep his voice from giving away how completely down-and-out he felt. "I think they're still working on him; I don't know, no one's come out yet. They had to run all these other tests first, and then there was the mountain of paperwork I had to sign before they could start. They said his oxygen whatever levels were pretty low when he came in, like 65 percent or something."

Brennan's eyebrows rose dramatically when she heard the dangerously low number, but she didn't say anything to Booth.

"Oxygen saturation levels; it's a measure of the percentage of hemoglobin binding sites occupied by oxygen in a person's bloodstream at any given time."

"Huh?" he said, shaking his head in confusion.

"Simply stated, it represents a measure of oxygen levels in the blood."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"The worst part is that they could only give him local anesthesia and some sort of other wussy tranquilizer for the procedure-they were afraid if they put him under, he might not wake up."

"Yes, general anesthesia and opiates tend to depress the respiratory system. If that system is already failing, they might cause breathing to come to a complete stop. I'm sure they didn't want to take any risks because of Hank's age."

"God" he added despairingly, looking away from her and running one of his hands over his head; "Pops hates all that garbage-the machines, the IVs. He always told me not to let doctors get to him with stuff like this, and I practically blackmailed him into letting them do it. He's got to be hating me for that."

Booth's eyes were watery and bloodshot and Brennan recognized the kind of struggle going on inside him, born of filial respect and devotion and, in this case, the apparently contradictory desire to keep his grandfather alive at all costs.

"He's a fighter Booth, and it's not as if pneumonia is an automatic death sentence. With the proper medications and certain-admittedly uncomfortable-procedures, a patient can easily recover. A while ago Hank gave you his power of attorney in the event he wasn't in a position to make decisions for himself because he trusts your judgment; he values your ability to choose what's right for him even when the choices are difficult. He wouldn't have agreed to the intubation if he didn't respect your opinion on the matter. It's not as if it was done against his will."

She put a hand on his arm.

"You did the right thing," she continued softly. "If there's any possibility that he might pull through, you have a moral obligation to provide him with the means to do so, which in this case included talking him into something he may not have originally wanted. Don't let his irritation and possible anger at you be your sole guide in this situation."

"I know; that's why I did it-tried talking some sense into him. I mean, I couldn't just let him die, could I?" he asked, searching Brennan's features for some sort of comforting sign. "And there's probably no way without that breathing tube that he would make it, is there?"

She knew he was looking for a truthful answer, but he also wanted to hear that he hadn't done the wrong thing.

At least for now, she could give him both.

"I don't know the particulars of his case, but given the doctor's diagnosis, Hank's age, and the fact that he's apparently been suffering from the condition for a few days, I doubt it. It's critical to be aggressive in the early stages of pneumonia; more so if the patient is elderly. Once the disease has progressed, it becomes much harder to treat."

It was a helpful answer, but it wasn't enough.

"I should've called him this week-I didn't even stop by on Sunday. I would've known something was wrong."

The comment made her want to both grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him, and bash her head against the wall. She understood that Booth's childhood had caused him to see himself as a scapegoat whenever there was a possibility for blame, and that even years of her many assurances and those of others had done little to change that behavior-but it still drove her absolutely crazy.

"Booth" she began patiently, keeping her incipient frustration to herself, "you are very diligent about staying in touch with Hank; you see him regularly, you speak to him on the phone at least once a week. You had Parker with you this weekend, and he wanted to go to the amusement park on Sunday. You've got a commitment not only to your grandfather, but to your son as well. You've always done the very best that you could for everyone in your family, which now includes two other small children-no one could possibly ask for more. Besides, you're forgetting that Hank lives in a very good facility with twenty-four hour nursing care. If they didn't think anything was seriously wrong with him until today with all of their years of experience, how could you have possibly known three days ago?"

Yet another helpful answer, but his brain refused to stop looking for a culprit. If it wasn't his fault, then whose was it? In his mind, his grandfather was in the hospital-suffering unnecessarily-with an illness that should probably have been caught much sooner by somebody.

"How could they not tell he was this sick if they're so experienced? You tell me; apparently, he had a fever for a couple of days. He was coughing. Put two and two together and you get four."

Brennan came to the nursing home's defense. She had witnessed how kind and solicitous the staff there always was with Hank despite his occasional cantankerousness, as well as how chronically under-manned these type of places were-even the best ones.

"Unfortunately, your grandfather is exactly like you. Taciturn about the things that are bothering or hurting him. And like you, he's an expert in deflecting attention away from himself when he has a problem."

Booth glared at his wife for her characterization of him and Pops, but some part of him recognized that maybe what she was saying, just _maybe_ for the sake of argument, wasn't too far from the truth.

"These people aren't psychics, Booth; they also have other people to look after. A cold isn't necessarily indicative of a more serious condition-it could be a passing virus. If your grandfather made light of his symptoms or outright chose to hide them because he didn't want to be fussed over, the nursing home staff shouldn't be blamed for their failure to act more expeditiously. What matters is that as soon as they understood the severity of the situation, they immediately called an ambulance, as they should have. There really wasn't much else they could do."

"Why are you defending them?" Booth asked heatedly, glare still in place. "Pops is always complaining about that place, that they don't do as much as they should."

"Hank can be rather..."

He looked at her with clouds of anger in his eyes.

"What?"

Brennan debated her choice of words carefully, eventually opting for complete candor.

Truth was best.

"He can be a challenging to look after-you know that as well as I do. And occasionally, he can also be quite unreasonable. You can't take all of his complaints seriously; in the past, he's scolded you for things which we both knew were not your fault. Elderly people are extremely attached to routine, and it can be difficult for them to adjust to new situations and experiences. An institutional environment with all its rules and regulations contains elements which by their very nature are bound to make older people unhappy. The feeling of losing of control over one's life can result in unwarranted criticism and misplaced anger-does any of this seem familiar to you at this very moment?" she asked quietly, tilting her head knowingly as she looked at him.

"What are you now, a Sweets clone?"

Despite the snarky comment, he had to admit she'd hit a home run with her assessment of both grandfather and grandson. Yes, he fessed up, she was right; like Pops, he too was feeling like he was quickly losing control over things. He didn't understand the medical lingo and he wasn't in a position to do a darned thing to help Pops beyond signing papers.

Papers.

It was enough to make a man want to run down the street screaming. He was an action guy used to getting the job done, and now he had to sit ringside and watch his grandfather struggle for his life. In essence, to do nothing.

"Mr. Booth?"

The couple turned around to find a petite, 30-something dark-haired woman in a doctor's coat looking at them inquisitively.

"Yes?"

"Actually, it's Agent Booth. He's a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigations."

"Bones..."

"What? I thought it might make it easier for the staff to distinguish you from your grandfather when they're speaking about Hank," Brennan stated in a helpful voice.

"We spoke earlier, Agent Booth" the attractive woman said with a smile, clearly fascinated by the strange interplay of the two people in front of her. "I'm Dr. Lisa Freeman; I admitted your grandfather a few hours ago. I just wanted to let you know that we finished intubating him and he's on a ventilator now. He'll be in his room shortly. His oxygen saturation levels have risen dramatically since he had the procedure. They're much better now, but we're hoping they'll go up even higher during the night."

Brennan extended her hand. "Hi, I'm Temperance Brennan; I'm Booth's wife and work partner. Hank's granddaughter-in-law."

Even though he was still a little annoyed at her for her defense of the nursing home and the unnecessary 'agent' addendum, Booth felt touched by how Bones had just represented herself to the doctor. It didn't even occur to him that to an outsider, the fact that his wife was calling him by his last name might appear extremely odd.

"Dr. Freeman, do you happen to know whether Mr. Booth's pneumonia is of a viral or bacterial nature? If it's bacterial, it would require a much more aggressive form of treatment."

"Oh, are you a doctor as well?" the woman asked with interest.

"My primary doctorate is in forensic anthropology; I also have several other degrees in related fields. I'm employed at the Jeffersonian Institute and I'm a consultant on forensic matters for the FBI. As a requirement of my job, I've researched the epidemiology of numerous diseases and their impact on the human body, including pneumonia."

"Very impressive" the woman replied, nodding at the list of accomplishments. "To answer your question, we don't know yet. We're culturing samples, but those won't come back for a few days. The end of tomorrow, it we're fortunate. However, given the quick onslaught of symptoms and the severity of the patient's condition as well as the group setting he was living in, I would venture a guess that even if the disease started out as a virus, it's probably become bacterial by now. We're treating it accordingly. He's on an intravenous full-spectrum antibiotic. If he doesn't improve at least somewhat in the next twelve hours, we'll reevaluate our options."

"It's that serious?"

Booth's worry was quickly turning into full-fledged terror.

"Unfortunately, your grandfather's not a young man, Mr. Booth; pneumonia in patients his age can be difficult to treat. We're staying guardedly optimistic though," she added with a smile. "By the way, I noticed that there were some dark spots coming up in Mr. Booth's chest x-rays; I'm pretty sure it's a form of emphysema. Was he a smoker?"

"Yeah, but he quit a long time ago-more than thirty years back." Booth's befuddled eyes focused on Brennan. "He stopped when he took me and Jared in. Why would that even be an issue now?" he asked, turning once again to the physician.

"The effects of emphysema can make themselves felt long after someone has stopped smoking," Dr. Freeman said. "The damage that occurred while the person was smoking is irreversible, although if they quit early enough, at least the condition doesn't usually worsen. But the bottom line is that any previous injury to the lungs makes it harder for them to fight infection. We'll keep our fingers crossed, though. Other than this issue he's facing, Mr. Booth is in relatively decent shape considering his age. His heart is very strong and that's important, because compromised breathing really puts a strain on the heart muscle. Hopefully we've caught this early enough," she added, aiming to leave her audience with something good to hold onto. "He's sedated and we would like him to rest, but you can stop in and see him briefly in about ten minutes, when the nurses finish setting him up in his room. ICU is on the sixth floor."

"Can I stay with him?" Booth asked.

The physician shook her head. "I'm sorry, no over-night stays allowed in the ICU except in rare cases, particularly when there's an infection involved; it's for everyone's safety, both the patients' and the visitors'. But you can come back early tomorrow morning, starting at 8:00. Visiting hours are posted by the nurses' station."

"Thanks-please have them call me day or night, if anything-_anything_-changes. I want to be there for him-I don't care what time it is" Booth said.

"I'll make a note of that-I believe we already have all your contact information. Nice meeting you both."

The doctor walked away, leaving Booth and Brennan alone in the waiting area; visiting hours were winding down, and the few stragglers that were there when Brennan first arrived were all gone now. Brennan stole a sideways glimpse at her mate. He stood next to her in absolute silence, checking his watch obssessively-waiting for those interminably long ten minutes to be up so he could see his beloved grandfather.

"Booth, I'm very sorry about Pops. But you shouldn't dwell on a worst-case scenario" she argued, trying to sound as upbeat as possible. "You're the one always telling me that it's important to retain a positive outlook. You heard what Dr. Freeman said about Hank's heart-I think it's very reasonable to remain optimistic given what we know."

When he didn't say anything, Brennan took a step over to her husband and slid a hand around his back, until it settled on his hip. He put his arm around her and looked down with a threadbare smile.

"Yeah, Pops has a really good, strong heart-always has."

Brennan tightened her hold on him.

"So does his grandson."


	4. Dan

The set-up at Washington General's Intensive Care Unit was one which both Booth and Brennan were well acquainted with. A large nurses' station in the center, with rooms radiating out from it like spokes on a wheel. The rooms were more akin to cubicles, with glass from the waist up so that the staff could more easily keep tabs on the patients. If privacy was needed for bathing or procedures, a curtain could be drawn over the windows-otherwise, they were kept open at all times.

The couple had seen it all before, but no amount of familiarity with the unit's layout could prepare either one of them for what was waiting on the other side of the door with the name 'Booth' drawn in bold, black letters on the board that hung from it.

Hank looked terrible.

Worse than terrible, in fact; heart-achingly bad. Even to someone who didn't know him as the solid, plucky octogenarian that he'd been before this recent illness took it all away.

He was propped up on a bed at a slight angle and the fought-over breathing tube protruded out of his mouth grotesquely, snaking its way from there to the machine that was now regularly feeding air into his lungs. The much-maligned device made a soft humming sound as it went about providing its life-saving service.

Booth was utterly devastated by the sight, and his face immediately registered his anguish. Even Brennan, who was certain she could handle just about anything after all the things she'd experienced in her life, was completely taken aback, unprepared for the emotional impact of seeing a man she had so much affection and respect for so altered.

The former M.P. appeared tiny and inconspicuous despite the dramatic heaving of his chest, lost as he was amid all the equipment, the IVs and the cables. His eyes were only half open and they were glazed over with a whitish film. Exactly, Brennan thought, like the eyes of a dead man.

Brennan heard her partner swallow hard right before he took a step forward and approached the bed.

"Pops" he whispered uncertainly, reminding Brennan of how her husband often reverted to being the affection-starved child from long-ago whenever he was in his grandfather's presence.

"It's me, Seeley."

There wasn't even a sliver of understanding in Hank's eyes, and Booth closed his own tight, trying to hold back tears as he leaned into the bed's railings with his head bent down.

To see his grandfather this way, so helpless; to know he was in large part to blame for what Pops was going through...

He shook his head in denial, overcome by a tidal wave of regret. And worst was the vague but persistent feeling that even with all this, things would probably not turn out the way he wanted them to.

Brennan couldn't help but grieve for both grandfather and grandson. Hank wouldn't live much longer no matter what; he was already approaching his nineties. But for Booth to have to see him in this condition, Booth, who had done nothing but try to make Pops' life easier for as long as she'd known him, just didn't seem fair.

As she silently took in the painful tableau, a well-muscled, short, dark-skinned black man in dark blue scrubs walked into the room and excused himself.

"You must be Mr. Booth's relatives" he said in a strong west-African accent, looking from Booth to Brennan. "Hi, my name is Daniel Oyoruma. Dan for short. I'll be Mr. Booth's overnight nurse. I usually work the night shifts here at the ICU."

The man gently rearranged Hank's pillow and turned his attention to the ventilator's screen.

"Hi" Booth replied, not paying much attention to the newcomer. He took another look at Pops, scrutinizing him much more critically now that he had managed to get a better hold of his feelings. "Yeah, I'm his grandson, Seeley Booth," he said with more confidence. There was a note of deep concern in his voice. "And this is my wife Temperance Brennan. Can I ask you a question?"

"Anything-I'm here to help."

"Why does he look like that-all red and sweaty? Is that normal?"

Brennan already knew the answer, but she let the RN deliver the information.

"Mr. Booth just had an albuterol treatment. It's a bronchodilator-it opens up the airways. Flushing and shaking are the most common side effects-they won't last long. The drug can make it hard to sleep, but your grandfather has some narcotics left over in his system from when they intubated him, so I think he'll sleep just fine tonight."

The man's gentle yet professional demeanor impressed Brennan, and she hoped it would make it easier for Booth to leave his grandfather behind this evening.

"You guys check up on him pretty often? 'Cause he's in really bad shape."

"All the time," Dan replied, flashing a warm, brilliant smile. His white teeth contrasted sharply with the dark hue of his skin. "And me, I treat these patients like they're my own family, especially the older ones. Don't worry Mr. Booth, I'll take very good care of your grandpa. You see all these wires and monitors?" he asked, taking a look around the crowded room. "The nurses keep track of everything that's going on with every patient over at the main station. You can go home tonight knowing we're going to do everything we can to keep him stable and comfortable. He's in good hands here, I promise."

"How long can we remain with him?" Brennan asked. "I know visiting hours are over."

Booth gave her a long look, and she knew he wasn't happy about her bringing that particular subject up. Still, Hank needed to rest and the hospital's protocol had to be followed in order for the place to be able to run as it should; as a scientist, she innately accepted that cardinal rule, no matter how inconvenient it was.

"Tell you what, I'll give you ten more minutes because I know you just got here, but let me close the curtain. If the head nurse sees you, she'll kick you out right away. But me, I understand. It's your grandpa."

Dan's promise was as good as gold; he drew the curtains and slipped away quietly, shutting the door behind him to give the family a moment alone.

Booth sat down next to Hank and gingerly held his hand, the one without the IV on it.

"I'm sorry about all this, Pops," he told him quietly. "But you're gonna get better; I know you will. Just hold on through the night-you can do it. Remember the kids."

He bowed his head down, and Brennan guessed from the way he was silently moving his lips that he was praying.

There was no reaction from Hank, and a part of her was grateful; it would have been infinitely harder on Booth if he could see any hint of suffering in his grandfather's eyes.

Twenty minutes later, Dan's head appeared in the doorway.

"It's time. They're checking all the rooms, and Gina-that's the head nurse-really sticks to the schedule. We call her the dragon lady, but don't tell her I said that" he said with a grin, and Brennan finally saw Booth smile. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Booth answered softly. "I think he really needs his sleep. You keep your eye on him-please?"

"You got my word on that, my friend" Dan replied, pointing a finger at Booth. "I'll be here tomorrow night too; I'm sure your grandpa will be much better by then-you'll see."

Booth nodded, and after kissing Pops' forehead and repeating that he'd be back first thing in the morning, he headed out with Brennan into the muggy night.


	5. A Remarkable Man

Booth made damn well sure he kept his end of the bargain the next day. He showed up at Washington General sharply at 7:30 am, before the doors of the ICU were even open.

And Hank kept at least a part of his-although he didn't seem any better, at least he made it through the night.

Other than that, the situation was pretty much unchanged from what is was the evening before. Save for the fact that Pops looked slightly more tranquil today, he was still unresponsive as Booth greeted him softly.

Booth really couldn't understand the lack of progress-it'd already been at least twelve hours on the ventilator; maybe more than that on the medication. Why wasn't Pops waking up? Hadn't Freeman said they should be seeing some improvement by now?

After sitting in the room for a couple of minutes staring blankly at the walls and jerking one of his knees up and down repeatedly, he suddenly got up and left, hell-bent on hunting down one of the doctors doing early-morning rounds on the floor to get some answers.

"He's still critical but stable" a middle-aged man in a white coat answered without much enthusiasm, after looking Hank's name up on the electronic tablet he was carrying. He wore a condescending, cool smile on his face which immediately rubbed Booth the wrong way. "Blood pressure's down, and I made a note here that oxygen saturation levels have improved, but that's to be expected considering he's been on ventilator since yesterday."

"But he's not waking up. I talked to him just now, and it's like I wasn't there" Booth retorted.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders, which only reaffirmed Booth's notion that the physician wasn't all that invested in Pops or his case. Probably just another old, sick person on their way out to deal with.

"His body's busy dealing with the infection, and he's also probably still groggy from yesterday's procedure. Mr. Booth might need a little more time, that's all. I'm sorry, but I really don't have anything else for you this morning; maybe after he receives another albuterol treatment he'll be more responsive."

Booth knew a brush-off when he saw one, and he let the guy go without pressing him further. He'd gotten lucky with Freeman; not everyone was willing to take the time to really communicate with a patient's family. He wasn't casting aspersions on this particular doctor's medical skills-just on his people ones. But he accepted that this would probably be the gist of his relationship with the hospital staff for however long Pops was here: hit or miss. And the next time he got a hold of someone who actually gave a crap about the human angle buried underneath all the machines and the monitors, he'd make sure not to take it for granted.

He spent the rest of the visiting hour sitting next to Hank's bed, looking at his grandfather. Not saying anything, just laying his hand on top of the old man's so that Pops could save his strength for the epic battle he had going on inside his lungs.

Bones came up in his thoughts as his mind began to drift. And what was new about _that_, he asked himself, trying unsuccessfully to hold back a smile. It was too bad that amid all the chaos at their house this morning, he hadn't managed to say goodbye to her-or thanks. When he rushed out to the car she was upstairs, getting Christine and Joseph ready on her own so that he could make it to the hospital on time, and they'd simply missed each other in all their hurry.

How'd that go? he wondered. It couldn't have been easy. The kids must have been as uncooperative and cranky as it got from their late night; lack of sleep usually translated into tantrums and overall mayhem the following day almost without fail.

Maybe he should have left them at Angela and Hodgins' place for the night. Bones could have gotten them ready there this morning instead of at home and it might have been easier on everyone. But spending the night without his kids when he was feeling like this, like a piece of him was already leaving-he couldn't do it.

Now that he had a family of his own, a wife he loved so intensely it almost hurt, now that his young children were growing up in his house right beside him...he shook his head, awed as always by his unexpected run of good fortune. He honestly didn't know how he'd kept himself together all on his own in the past, through all the headaches with Jared and Rebecca and the barrage of depressing updates on his dad.

Stiff drinks and the FBI's gun-range; lots of stiff drinks and lots and lots of ammo.

Definitely not like it went last night, reading stories to his kids on his lap while he held them tight against him, decompressing with his wife over a glass of wine in the kitchen, falling asleep-even if the sleep wasn't the best-with Bones rubbing his shoulders, looking after him and his score of mosquito bites.

More than anything, he wanted Pops to keep sharing all that good stuff in his life with him; to keep seeing that his hard work with those two, out-of control young brats all those years ago had paid off in every possible way. Not just professionally, but personally as well.

Pops had done good by them, by him and Jared.

Real good.

And boy, he of all people got that it hadn't been the least bit easy-they hadn't _made_ it easy.

By the time the cavalry came to the rescue, he and his brother were scarred in more ways than he could count. Rebellious, unwilling to trust anyone, quick to anger and even quicker to fight back. Trouble in school, in the neighborhood, just about everywhere they went, and not a shred of self-worth left to counterbalance all that aggression. A massive, 80 car pile-up just waiting to happen right around the corner.

They sure gave the old man a hard time those first few years, he thought remorsefully.

Poor Pops, right when he was finally recovering from the loss of his wife, when he was looking forward to hanging out with his buddies and playing dominoes at the local VFW Hall, parenthood had been thrust upon him all over again by his wayward son and his absent daughter-in-law. Except that this time the job was infinitely harder than the first time around must have been-he had to go it alone, making the best out of already severely tarnished merchandise.

The man was a saint; he truly was. Patient most of the time even when he was being sorely tested, and strict when he had to be, which was often. But loving? Loving, that he was always. It was that seemingly inexhaustible love for his grandkids which had kept him and Jared afloat, that had kept both of them from being sucked into the bad life of the streets where they'd been heading almost inevitably, like ships without a rudder.

Having Pops share in his happiness with Bones and his kids felt like a bit of repayment for all that hard work, and he wanted that repayment, all those irreplaceable family moments, to keep on going for as long as they could. And he absolutely wanted Christine and Joseph to get to know the amazing person that was their great-grandfather.

Given all that, how could he not be expected to do everything he could to extend Pops' life?

Tooth and nail it would be, and they would pull through this latest setback together, he and Pops, like they always had in the past.


	6. Battle of Wills

Booth left the hospital room when he was asked to, returning promptly at noon with Brennan during the next scheduled visiting hour. But there was still nothing new, no sign of consciousness in Hank, and the pair sat in silence the whole time with Brennan watching her partner surreptitiously. It had only been one day, but Hank's illness was already taking its toll on Booth. He looked tired, and she knew he hadn't eaten anything this morning. Whether he wanted to or not, she was going to drag him to the diner before they headed back to work.

She might not be in a position to do much for Hank, but she could certainly look after his grandson.

She knew that Hank would approve.

Yet another visit at 7 pm, but this time there was finally some good news; Hank was awake, and Booth walked up to his grandfather's bed feeling slightly more optimistic-until he saw the unmistakable glint of anger in Pops' half-open eyes.

"Pops..."

Hank began shaking his head vigorously the closer his grandson got, and Booth was sure that the breathing tube was going to become dislodged.

"Don't, Pops; just stay calm."

But the old man couldn't be appeased; he waived his free hand around, thumb and pointing finger on his right hand clicking wildly together.

"What is it-Bones, what's he want?" an increasingly disconcerted Booth asked, when he couldn't figure out what Hank was trying to tell him.

"I thinking he's requesting a writing implement."

Hank turned his face towards Brennan and nodded.

"Don't get upset, Pops; I'll get you one."

Booth immediately took a notepad out of his jacket and opened it to a clean page, but the movement was too hasty and the pen that was inside fell to the floor and rolled under the bed.

"Here, let me do it Booth" Brennan said calmly, stepping in when she noticed how jittery her husband was.

She retrieved a new pen from her purse, and placing the pad on the bed, she wrapped her hand around Hank's and helped to guide his fingers over the paper.

_How long_ the wavy, almost illegible handwriting spelled out.

Booth shook his head as he looked at Brennan in confusion.

"I believe Hank is asking how long he will need to be on a ventilator."

Hank nodded again.

_As long as it takes_, Booth thought to himself, but that's not the answer that would make Pops happy-not that anything would, based on how mad he was.

"It hasn't even been a day, Pops; you've got to give the medicine time to work."

Hank glowered at his grandson while he tapped the notebook insistently with his finger.

"Maybe a couple of days," Booth hedged.

His grandfather closed his eyes and fell back into the pillow, looking absolutely furious.

"They're doing everything they can; they have to run more tests. Pops, you're already looking better," Booth argued. "Please, you've got to be patient."

Hank motioned for the pen again, and Brennan helped him write a new note.

_Ez for u to say_

Brennan heard the sharp intake of air by her mate right after he read the comment, and she saw both guilt and ire careen recklessly across his narrowed eyes as he stared at his grandfather in disbelief. She was hoping Booth could contain his temper given the huge amount of stress he was under, for Pops' and his own sake; words uttered in the heat of the moment could sometimes be taken back, but not always.

"How can you say that Pops?" Booth's exhaustion and helplessness finally erupted in a harshly worded query to his grandfather. "You think I like seeing you like this-that I don't feel awful about it?"

Brennan placed a hand on her husband's back, trying to remind him that Hank was simply venting and that his grievance wasn't personal. She understood what Booth couldn't because he was too caught up in the situation-that his grandfather was just taking shots at whatever target he could to release some tension, and that unfortunately, Booth happened to be the closest one at hand.

The supportive gesture had an immediate effect. Booth's shoulders relaxed and he took his grandfather's hand in his.

"I love you, Pops; you mean everything to me. Work with me here, please. You have a really good chance of getting out of this place, if you let the doctors do what they have to do. I know you won't like me very much for it, but one of us has to be the rational person here."

Brennan did her best to refrain from smiling, but it was nothing short of remarkable hearing her mate refer to himself in absolute seriousness as 'the rational one.' The speech seemed to work though, however out of character it may have been. Hank's irritation dissipated slowly, and she saw him squeeze his grandson's hand back.

"I'm gonna be here with you, every minute that they let me; me and Bones. I can't just let you go just like that Pops, not when you have so much to live for. Can you keep helping me out here, please?"

Hank nodded slightly as his eyes filled with tears.

"So we're good?" Booth asked in a low, quivering voice.

The question, colored by both hope and uncertainty, brought out the apprehensive, tentative boy hidden inside her husband, the one who was always seeking forgiveness for some wrong or another, and Brennan looked on with worry. If Pops couldn't find it in his heart to issue his blessing, Booth would be devastated.

But Pops relented, like she was almost certain he would, because Hank loved his grandson more than just about anything else in the world. He nodded, giving Booth a weak, shaky version of their trademark handshake, and Brennan knew right there and then that nothing important had been broken between the pair.

"Hey, what'd I tell you, my friend? That your grandpa would be better tonight, eh?" Dan, the RN from the evening before, said in a happy voice. His exuberance and his smile brightened the room as soon as he walked through the door. "Didn't I?"

"Mr. Booth," he went on, turning to Hank, "I'm your overnight nurse, Dan; I'm the one who's gonna get you in tip-top shape for your family here. They were real worried about you last night, but I told them I look after my people; no getting worse on my watch. It's time to get you ready for your rest now; say bye-bye to your family."

Dan gave Booth and Brennan an exaggerated, slow wave, as Hank looked on in amusement. He seemed taken by the small man's big personality, and he motioned for the pen again.

_Prty girl nurs?_

Brennan showed the note to Dan, and he laughed out loud.

"I've been told by some nice ladies I know that I'm pretty, but I'm afraid I can't do anything about the girl part. Better luck during the day shift, Mr. Booth."

Hank's eyes crinkled into a smile, and with that, the mood in the room improved considerably. Brennan felt happy for Booth; at least he'd be leaving the hospital on a much more positive note tonight. With any luck, he'd sleep better as a result.

After saying their final goodnights to Pops and his watchful aide, Booth and Brennan began walking hand in hand towards the elevators when Booth's eyes accidentally fell on a patient in a nearby room. A very elderly man, who was also on a ventilator, but who looked to be in far worse shape than Pops. He was curled up in his bed, and his skin was withered and so incredibly thin and sallow that it almost looked like parchment paper. His closed eyes showed no signs of awareness. Save for the fact that his chest rose and fell at regular intervals, it would have been almost impossible to tell that he was still living.

A stocky, white-haired woman was sitting next to the sleeping man dressed entirely in black, and as Booth and Brennan walked by their window, she looked up at them for a moment before turning away.

Brennan didn't notice her, but Booth was struck by the mix of unwilling resignation and defiance he saw etched into the woman's deeply lined features, and he stopped in his tracks; he didn't understand it, but the sight of the elderly patient and the brief exchange of glances with his visitor had really shook him up.

Brennan tilted her face up at him, wondering why they weren't moving.

"What's wrong, Booth?"

"Nothing. It's just..." he shook his head. "Nothing. Let's go."

Dan happened to pass them on his way to the nurses' station and, after thinking about it for a second, Booth reached out his hand and held Dan in place, making a slight motion with his head towards the elderly patient's room.

"How long's he been here?" he asked.

"Oh, that, it's a very sad story" the nurse replied in a whisper, most likely because information about patients was confidential.

"Poor Mr. Jasinski's been here about three months."

"Three months?" Brennan said in shock, after leaning into Booth and spotting the patient the two men were discussing. "Attached to a ventilator?"

"Exactly like that" Dan replied, and he looked up skywards with a sigh.

"Polish couple, from the old country. He was a big construction guy in the States-lots of money. His wife comes here everyday, three times a day-her driver walks her in and out; the kids come also, but less than the wife."

Booth couldn't tear his eyes away from the elderly man and his wife.

"Is he ever awake?" he asked.

"Oh yes, he's awake a lot, and that's the worse part. He can feel everything. Sometimes though, like today, he's just so tired he can't keep his eyes open, not even when his wife is here."

"What quality of life can this patient possibly hope to have once he leaves this place, assuming he's ever well enough to be released from the hospital?" Brennan asked. "Three months is a very long time for a person his age to be bedridden, completely immobilized."

"Very little, I'm afraid; the old man's muscles are totally gone-atrophied, by now. No rehab can fix that. He's starting to get bedsores that even we can't treat. His mind, I think it's going too," Dan added in his clipped African accent, staring at the ancient occupant of the room with compassion. "All he does is sleep-sleep and suffer."

He shook his head ruefully.

"But it won't happen; he's not getting out of this place alive. Every time they take the tube out because they think he might be able to breathe on his own, the doctors end up having to put it right back in. He can't make it on his own; his lungs are too damaged."

"That has to be agonizing for him. So why is he still on a ventilator if there's no chance of recovery? Can't they remove it and let nature take its course?" Brennan pressed, feeling outrage on behalf of the beleaguered old man.

"I'm not supposed to be saying this" Dan said, looking around him furtively, "but I guess it doesn't hurt anyone. The wife-she won't sign the DNR papers-you know, the ones that tell the hospital not to do anything else if the patient starts to go. The kids have asked her to please take the tube out and let their pa go so he can finally get some rest, but she won't do it; says she can't let her husband die, that it goes against what God wants. The kids tell her it's what _she_ wants that she's doing, but they don't push too much; their mother is old and they respect her."

"The cost must be exorbitant" Brennan remarked; "insurance can't possible cover it all. It's a gross misallocation of money and resources which could be better spent on other more promising cases."

"Bones, money doesn't matter when family's involved" Booth snapped back with a frown, and Brennan inherently felt that her husband was chastising her for her uncharitable reference to economics where a human being was concerned. But this wasn't just about money, Brennan thought; in her opinion, it was simply cruel and unnatural to allow a person to continue living under such terrible conditions when there was absolutely no possibility of improvement for them.

She wasn't going to argue about it with Booth, though. This wasn't the time or the place for that, and in any event, she didn't think her husband was capable of viewing the situation objectively at the moment, especially since it was hitting too close to home for him.

"Mrs. Jasinski has the money to keep him in the hospital for as long as he lasts. Sometimes I get the feeling that her husband is mad at her and at us for that, for keeping him like this. But eventually God will have his way no matter how much we fight him, and he'll take the old man with him. I pray for him every day in the hospital chapel, asking the Lord to take pity on his soul, and for his wife to find some peace. I also feel very bad for her; it's her husband in that room. She probably knows it's not right to keep him like this, but she just can't bring herself to give him up. People say it's selfish of her, but you have to be in that position to know how hard it is to let go of a loved one. So that's why I pray for her too; so that she can find the strength to do that some day."

Brennan looked up at her mate, and she could immediately tell that the anxiety that had begun to ebb a few minutes ago was coming right back as he stood there listening to Dan in troubled silence.

She could guess what Booth was thinking; that every day Hank spent in the hospital, his chances of returning to his old, relatively independent way of life were dimming. That maybe the time would come for him, as Pops' guardian, to be in that woman's place, making painful ethical decisions on behalf of his grandfather if things ended up taking a turn for the worse. She put her arm through his, and pulled him away, towards the elevator doors; away towards their car and the shelter of their home.

He had more than enough on his mind already, without making himself dwell on what the future might bring.


	7. All the Things We Can't See

The next few days flew by for Booth and Brennan; their time was mainly spent running between their home, the hospital, work, parent conferences at Christine's pre-school, playdates, the grocery store, and always back to the hospital.

Unfortunately, all the mundane aspects of life, the daily chores and obligations, didn't just cease to exist simply because you were worried sick about someone close to you.

As for the remains at the pool, they'd finally been identified by Brennan and the staff at the Jeffersonian as Greg Harrison, a Seattle anchorman who'd gone out fishing by himself out to the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington two months ago and who'd never made it home. His boat had been found drifting by itself two days after his date of departure by the authorities, and the presumption was that he'd fallen overboard into the choppy waters of Puget Sound and drowned.

He'd fallen overboard alright, but not into Pacific and not two months ago-more like two weeks back, into the still, murky waters of an abandoned swimming pool in Washington DC. He also hadn't drowned; the skeletal remains examined by Brennan showed clear signs of strangulation.

Due to the quasi-celebrity status of the victim and the bizarreness of the circumstances surrounding his disappearance and death, the FBI put the case on their front burner. And since it was already assigned to Booth, it was expected that he would continue to head the investigation and deal with the paperwork regardless of the fact that he had other pressing things of a more personal nature on his mind.

He never missed the morning visits or the evening ones with his Pops, but the midday ones were iffy-he was sometimes late. But whenever he knew he wouldn't be able to make it right on time, he made sure that at least Brennan was there to take his place.

Brennan had already strapped on her seatbelt and turned on the ignition when Booth's booming voice came through on the car's speakerphone.

"Bones, I'm stuck in the middle of this stupid interrogation;" he said, sounding more than a little irritated. "I don't think I'll get there by twelve. I don't want Pops looking at the clock and realizing that no one's there for him. Do you think..."

"Booth, I'm already on my way. I'll tell Hank you'll be a few minutes late."

"Thanks. Bones?"

"Yes Booth?"

"I love you."

She smiled as she pulled out of the parking garage; it was all so simple, so clear for her partner-he loved her, and that was that. And the strangest thing of all was that she felt the very same way about him. No second-guessing, no disclaimers-and that was also that.

Good and true and simple; nothing in her life had ever been as easy and uncomplicated as loving the man she'd chosen as her life companion.

"I love you too. I'll see you there."

The doors to the ICU opened exactly at noon, and Brennan walked in along with family members of some of the other patients, including Mrs. Jasinski and her driver. She went directly to Hank's room expecting to find him looking out anxiously for her and Booth like he had for the last eight days, but the room was empty.

A cold chill ran down her spine. Was it possible...? But of course not; Hank had to be okay-the hospital would have called her or Booth if he'd taken a turn for the worse.

Her heart rate was just beginning to go back to normal when Dan came into the room carrying a stack of supplies.

"Dan, I didn't expect to see you here this early in the day. Don't you usually work the night shift?"

"Hello, Dr. Brennan" he said cheerily, despite his evident tiredness. "The hospital was short-staffed this morning, so I stayed on. Can I help you with anything?"

"Hank Booth-he's not here. Is he alright?"

"Oh, Mr. Booth is just fine" Dan replied, smiling. "They're replacing the tracheal tube with an intranasal one because he's doing much better; he should be a lot more comfortable now. It was supposed to be over an hour ago, but because of the staffing problems today all the procedures were delayed."

He looked at Brennan closely, and then his brows knit together in surprise as if it had suddenly dawned on him that something was amiss.

"Where's your other half? I hear from the day nurses that Agent Booth almost never misses a visit. He sure hasn't missed any of the evening ones."

"Booth is running a little late; he got stuck at work. He wanted to make sure I arrived here on time because he didn't want his grandfather to think no one was coming by to see him. He really doesn't like disappointing Hank in any way."

"He loves his grandpa a lot, doesn't he? I can feel it-you can't fake that kind of devotion."

Brennan nodded. "Family is very important to Booth-especially Hank. He raised Booth and his brother. It's been very difficult for Booth seeing his grandfather in the condition he's in."

"Where I'm from, family is important too, especially our elders. We believe they are very wise and have many life lessons to teach the younger generations; we value their experience. Here in the States, a lot of people hide their old folks away and don't come to see them very often-I think in the west people are afraid of getting old, and they're uncomfortable being exposed to the process. But if you don't have any examples of people growing old with dignity and grace around you, how can _you_ do it well when your time comes? That's why I'm so impressed by your husband-he treats his grandpa very kindly, with respect and love. He's a good grandson."

"Yes, he is; he would do anything for Hank. You're from Nigeria, is that correct?"

Dan flashed Brennan one of his trademark, white-toothed grin. "Now how'd you know that-it's those secret FBI connections, right?"

"Actually, I recognized the accent right away. I'm very familiar with the Yoruba culture and its religious rituals; it was the topic of one of my doctoral dissertations. I spent several months in the area around Lagos and Ekiti."

"That is amazing! Who would have guessed-you living in my homeland? The Yoruba culture-yes, it's still around of course, but the old ways, the old religion, eventually it will all disappear."

"Sadly, I agree. That's why I wanted to study and record that religious aspect of the culture for posterity while there were still people practicing their ancient, polytheistic beliefs. It's an anachronism that is almost certainly bound to be stamped out by the pressures of modernization along with the mandates of organized religion."

"Now almost everyone in my country is either Muslim or Christian-the Yoruba gods and goddesses are slowly losing their place in our society. But many of us still hold on to some of the ancient ways."

"Like what?" Brennan asked with interest.

"Like the belief that all of life is connected and sacred, and everything that surrounds us is alive-the rocks, the clouds, even fire and water. But mainly, the idea that the spirits of the people who have departed the world of the living are still all around us, guiding us in our daily lives."

Brennan was used to having this type of discussion with her husband, though it never seemed to do any good. She could never get him to budge from his position that so-called supernatural occurrences, like miracles and ghosts, were real-maybe even Leprechauns, of all things. She even harbored the suspicion that a part of him actually believed in the existence of Santa Claus. Though occasionally there were still friendly arguments between them about this topic, a mutual decision had tentatively been reached by both parties to agree to disagree, for the sake of maintaining matrimonial harmony.

"There is actually no scientific proof that anything survives after death-when the body ceases to function, so does consciousness and all that makes the person an individual. I don't believe that spirits exist."

"Ah, but they do," Dan insisted gently. "And they come to collect the living and welcome them into the afterlife when it's time to leave. All our loved ones, they gather near us to make it easier to cross over. I've seen it-dying patients calling out to the people who have gone before them, people that were important to them. They speak to these people in their final moments as if they were made of flesh and blood. They are as real as you or I to them."

Brennan shook her head.

"Research has shown that a dying person's brain chemistry can cause hallucinations. It's logical that a patient in the process of dying would focus on an image he or she finds comforting as the body begins to shut down. I myself experienced a vision of my deceased mother when I was shot by an assailant years ago and my heart stopped-although I would like to think that she actually spoke to me, that I got the opportunity to be with her again, I'm convinced that it was only an illusion."

"I know what those studies say-I've read some of them, but they're wrong. I've witnessed it. I was a doctor in Nigeria; I dealt with a lot of people dying from AIDS there, and I can tell you that nothing in science can explain what I saw on some of those patients' faces as they left this earth. The spirits are there with them, and the patients can see them. It's the same thing time and time again. The look of peace and happiness in their eyes, no chemicals can create that. I bet your mother really was looking out for you when you were in trouble" he said softly. "Believe it-love survives long after the body that housed it is gone. All those bonds continue past death, they are so strong. Like what you and your husband have-it's something too special to vanish with that one last breath."

Brennan looked at Dan skeptically, but as with Booth a few days ago, she wasn't going to argue about something that could result in nothing but ill-feelings. Sometimes she wondered, because the sensation of having been with her mother had been so real, but she always returned to the notion that comforting as the thought of their existence was, there were no spirits; just neurons misfiring as lack of oxygen caused them to stop working properly. Ultimately, nothing short of physical evidence that she could see and touch was going to move her from that long-held belief.

And yet, there was an undeniable appeal to Dan's theory that she and Booth would remain together in some way if one or both of them died. Still, mere hope wasn't enough for her; as a rational person, proof remained the standard.

"You were a doctor in Nigeria?" she asked, switching the topic to something less controversial. "Why are you an RN in the United States?"

"My medical degree wasn't accepted here. I would have had to attend another year of medical school and join a residency program in order be certified in America, and I didn't have the money. My wife and I have three little kids-she doesn't work. And this job pays alright; we make do with what we have. We live better here on my salary as a nurse than we did when I was a physician back home."

"You're extremely good at your job; it's a pity you can't complete your studies and obtain your medical degree-you would make an exceptional doctor."

Brennan meant the compliment, just as she always meant everything she said. She truly felt that Daniel Oyoruma's skills were underutilized in his current position.

"It's not so bad, doing what I do; I actually enjoy it a lot. I feel that nurses provide a valuable service in the health industry that sometimes gets overlooked because we don't have a fancy title. My colleagues and I try to bring a little humanity into this big, cold building. As RNs and aides, we're in a position to connect with patients and their families in a way that doctors can't because they're too focused on finding the cause of an illness and avoiding lawsuits. I like filling in that gap. But it would be nice to be a doctor again" he said, with a little longing in his voice. "If nothing else to show interns that you can be both a healer and a human being-it doesn't have to be one or the other. There's lots of good doctors here, but there's also many that could use a lesson or two about relating to their patients, especially the older ones."

"You've certainly made Hank's life easier; Booth and I are both aware that you take time during your breaks to talk and to read to him in the evenings; he wrote a note telling us about it. We're both indebted to you for how well you've taken care of Hank. I know Booth rests a lot easier at night because he knows you're looking after his grandfather."

"It's a privilege for me to be able to help people. It fills my heart with joy-you don't have to thank me."

Brennan was moved both by Dan's humility and his good heart. He really was a rarity in this day and age of skepticism and self-service: a man with a calling.

"If you ever decide to continue your studies and become a doctor, please call me" she told him. "I know several people who could help you get into medical school; perhaps even assist you in obtaining a grant or a scholarship so that returning to school wouldn't be such a burden for you and your family. I would be happy to write you a letter of recommendation-I think it would carry quite a lot of weight given my credentials."

Dan shook his head as he looked at Brennan with slightly watery eyes.

"Thank you very much for the offer, Dr. Brennan," he said with a quiver in his voice. "It's very, very generous of you. Maybe I'll take you up on it when my kids get bigger and my wife goes back to work. But for now, I'm happy just keeping my eye on Mr. Booth for you and your husband."

_*There's a point to the conversation about the afterlife between Brennan and Dan-it will come into play a little later._


	8. May it Never Come

Another spoonful of thin, watery gruel went into Hank's mouth, and another sour face came out.

"C'mon, Pops, you gotta eat it."

"If you like it so much, how come _you_ don't finish it?" Hank replied in a gruff, hoarse voice that Booth could barely understand. "How's a person supposed to get better downing this stuff? It's like eating rat poison. It don't even look like oatmeal, if that's what it's supposed to be."

Booth dipped the spoon back into the grayish concoction and lifted it once again to his grandfather's lips.

"It _is_ oatmeal, Pops" he argued. "It's just that you haven't eaten anything in more than three weeks, and things probably taste weird."

And right now Booth had his best poker-face on, because the so-called oatmeal _did_ look extremely unappetizing. He'd seen more visually appealing stuff crawling around in Hodgins' office.

"If that's true, then it should taste like heaven, not mushed-up cardboard. No more-that's it. Next time, tell those blood-suckers I want steak. Well-done."

This was just the start of the battle Booth thought, biting his tongue. If he couldn't even get Pops to eat a damn bowl of oatmeal, how was he going to marshall him through the rigors of physical therapy?

He glanced at Hank's legs, now covered by the hospital sheet. Last night, when Dan had been turning Pops over on his side, Booth had silently gasped in shock when he saw what little was left of the old man's leg muscles; he could've almost wrapped one of his hands around a calf, they had degenerated so quickly. To build them back up to where he could walk again...

Dr. Freeman had already warned him.

Many older patients couldn't take the rehab after so many weeks of being stuck in bed. They gave up-and so did their relatives-once they realized how much agony was involved.

And they wound up in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.

Hank was a bull of a man, but he was almost ninety. He was groaning just from being moved around in the bed-how was rehab, with all the pushing and pulling involved, ever going to work out? But life in a wheelchair...he knew that would be a real blow to Pop's ego, having to constantly rely on others for everything, from bathing to going to the bathroom. Booth would be pushing and pulling right along with the therapist, but ultimately, it was up to his grandfather to decide whether he would walk again or not. If he couldn't go through what promised to be a gut-wrenching ordeal, they would all have to make do with what was left of the pre-illness former MP. At least he'd be getting out of the hospital alive, and that was all that mattered. Anything else they could deal with.

The conversation he had with Dr. Freeman last night was still fresh in Booth's mind, as he switched the oatmeal for the hopefully more palatable Jello cup.

He wished it'd never happened.

"The x-rays are still coming up a little cloudy, but it seems that the infection is finally starting to respond to antibiotics. We talked it over with Mr. Booth this afternoon, and he would like us to exchange the intranasal tube for an oxygen cannula, which I beleive is a feasible alternative now that he's better. You know, it's the little flexible tubing that goes under the nose and supplies air through a vent."

"Yeah, I know what that is. And it's ok to do that? I know he wants the respirator gone, but isn't it too early if he's still sick?"

Dr. Freeman shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing at this stage is certain. We've done as much as we could in terms of treatment. It's possible that we'll take him off the ventilator and we'll be right back to where we were when he was admitted. But the reality is that if he doesn't start eating solid foods and moving around soon, we may have even bigger issues to worry about than the possibility of a relapse. Much as we try to prevent it, there are nasty infections a lot more dangerous than pneumonia lurking around in hospital areas. We also need to try to get your grandfather out of here and into a place where he can regain some of his mobility. We can't do that while he's attached to a ventilator. Otherwise, an assisted living facility may no longer be an option for him when he leaves; he may have to go into an actual nursing home with full-time care."

"He won't stand it there-you don't know how stubborn he is."

She smiled as she looked at Booth through her lashes.

"I have some idea."

After having been Hank's primary physician for three weeks, Booth conceded, she probably did.

"Okay, go ahead then," he agreed reluctantly.

"It'll be done by the time you get here at 8 tomorrow, and you'll probably find him in much better spirits."

"Or back to his usual crabbiness" Booth said under his breath, already picturing the ill-humor coming his way.

Dr. Freeman stopped him as he started heading back to Hank's room.

"Agent Booth, I have to warn you about something. Your grandfather signed a 'Do Not Resuscitate' form earlier today. That means that as long as he's conscious, even if his condition worsens to the point where he goes into cardiac arrest, we can't do anything invasive to help him. We won't be able to put him on any type of life-support, including the ventilator; we can only make him more comfortable. It's his right-a hospital attorney was present in the room when he signed it, as well as a witness."

"Nothing? Not even CPR?"

Freeman shook her head. "However, if he's no longer aware, you, as his legal guardian, can request that we intervene."

Booth felt relieved to hear that he still had the power to do that, even if he didn't like the idea of Hank's health going into a nosedive before he could step in.

But Dr. Freeman wasn't done.

"He's going to ask you to sign one too; he already advised me of that."

"What?"

"I want you to understand the nature of the DNR form, in case you're not familiar with it. With those forms in our files, if Mr. Booth's vital organs begin to shut down, the hospital staff will be prohibited from taking any extraordinary measures to extend his life. Many older patients as well as those with chronic conditions often ask to have this order in place because they don't want their quality of life to degrade to the point where they really start to suffer when there's little if any hope of recovery. But failure by the hospital to take action in such cases more often than not results in death," she stated bluntly. "I explained all this to him as well, but he said it's what he wants-no more machines. He made that very clear to me this morning, but I thought I should give you an inkling of what's coming so that you could be prepared when he approaches you."

Booth was left temporarily speechless by the news, but it seemed that Dr. Freeman was well-acquainted with that almost universal response by relatives to DNR requests by ailing family members.

She took a hold of his arm and patted it reassuringly.

"I'm sure you and your grandfather will work things out; but please, take his feelings and not just your own into account before you both determine what's best for him. Perhaps you can try to talk him out of his decision, but if you do, be gentle about it-don't agitate him. He's been through a lot, and any strong emotion might only set him back. Maybe you can manage to put off the conversation until later, when he's a little stronger and you've both had more time to think about it. It's also important to consider that signing the order may not carry any repercussions whatsoever; your grandfather could very well do fine on his own, and be in a position to leave the hospital in a couple of days."

Booth emerged from his initial torpor long enough to acknowledge what the doctor was telling him.

"Thanks for the heads-up, Dr. Freeman" he said, still in a half-daze. "I...I have to think about it."

But it wasn't true-there was nothing to think about. How could he sign something like _that_? A virtual death-warrant for his grandfather? How could Pops even be thinking of asking him to go along with this crazy idea?

Yeah, he would definitely try to put off that conversation for as long as he could, and like Dr. Freeman said, hopefully it wouldn't be an issue because his old man would get out of here and it would all be a moot point. He guessed the order only applied for as long as Hank was in the hospital for this specific issue; once he got out, it would be worthless.

He walked into the room hoping like mad that the damn piece of paper wouldn't come up in conversation anytime soon.


	9. Second Chances

"Shrimp, I need a favor."

Booth could already feel his stomach tightening into hard, tight knots, and he braced for the inevitable clash of wills that he knew was about to begin. A struggle that couldn't possibly end well, with one side guaranteed to be the loser.

_Don't argue with him...don't argue_-_stay calm_.

He put the spoon back on the tray, and taking a deep breath, he tried finding his supposed center, just like Bones had taught him to do whenever he was feeling stressed.

It didn't do much; it never did. His temples were still throbbing painfully, the muscles along his jawline jerking with involuntary tics as he ground his teeth together.

"Pops..."

"They handed you all my stuff after they brought me here, right?"

He wasn't sure what his grandfather was talking about, but he couldn't have been happier about the fact that whatever it was didn't seem to have anything to do with the form he and Freeman had been discussing the evening before.

"What stuff-you mean your wallet and your wedding band? I've got them at home-don't worry."

"Good. And my watch? That watch means a lot to me."

"The one that doesn't work? Got that too. I don't know why you won't let me get it fixed for you-I'm sure it's a nothing job."

"'Cause I don't trust anybody with it. Besides, at my age, you don't need to know what the hell time it is-time's just running out, and you're not going to no party. That's not why I wear it," Pops replied gruffly.

"I know, I know; it's for sentimental reasons-grandma gave it to you on your 30th wedding anniversary."

"It was something-she must've saved for years to get me that watch. It's real fancy, made in Europe somewhere-an Omega. Don't need no batteries. As long as you shake it around once in while, it keeps working."

"But it doesn't work" Booth said, same as he'd remarked ten, twenty, thirty times before to no effect. "Just let me get it fixed for you already," he nagged.

Pops harrumphed-a good old-fashioned, unmistakable harrumph of contempt.

"Will you listen already? That's not the favor I'm asking. I just want you to keep it for me."

"'Til you get out. Sure, I was planning on doing that-I wasn't going to put it back at the retirement place without you being there."

"No, I want you to _keep_ it-for good; I don't want it back. Then you can fix it all you want. That way you can finally stop complaining that it's broken."

The request practically knocked Booth off his feet. He never thought he'd live to see the day where his grandfather would want to part with that one special memory of all his years with his wife.

"It's _your_ watch, Pops; you just told me how much it means to you-you're getting it back the minute you get out of here."

Hank shook his head, and Booth noticed his grandfather was getting winded.

"You like old stuff-Jared doesn't" Hank continued, pausing momentarily to catch his breath. "I know you'll take good care of it, and if I hang on to it, someone's bound to swipe it back at the home when I'm not looking-shifty, crazy old people all over the place. They even waltz inside your room and steal your candy when you're in the shower. Seeley, I want you to have it son, please."

He knew he couldn't say no, but right now, Booth didn't want anything to do with Pops' watch; agreeing to keep it was like admitting that Hank was never leaving the hospital-like they were already saying their final goodbyes to each other.

But before he went on with the knee-jerk urge to say 'no', Booth took a second to consider why he was being so stubborn about this. Pops was definitely on the mend now, so rationally, why was it such a big deal to accept his gift? It could only hurt Pops' feelings if he kept turning him down. Besides, he was pretty sure he'd be able to convince his grandfather to take it back once he saw how good it looked all polished up and ticking.

"Okay, I'll keep; but only with the understanding that it's still yours, and that you can have it whenever you want. And I _am_ going to get it fixed. And I'll bet anything you'll want it back _then_."

Pops pursed his lips together and he snarled, same as he used to when one of his grandsons went out of his way to get on his nerves-which happened way more often than it should have.

"You're a pain in the butt, you know that? Always have to have the last word-but I love you anyways," he added, gulping back the beginning of a sniffle. "Seeley, there's something else I need to ask..."

This time, there was no taking refuge in random requests to hold on to valuable mementos; Booth was dead sure he knew what this other something else was, and he immediately went into damage control mode.

He didn't want to have this conversation; just plain didn't. Maybe it was childish of him, and maybe it made him a bad grandson and an even worse legal guardian-maybe just a bad person overall-but he couldn't help how he felt about the whole DNR thing. That it was wrong, that they shouldn't be looking into it, let alone discussing the possibility that he go along with Pops' plan like it was nothing.

He took his phone out of his pocket in a hurry, hoping he could distract his grandfather long enough to buy himself some more time.

"Hey, guess what? Parker won one of the gold medals in the Virginia state science fair for his high school project. Isn't that amazing? My kid, winning a prize at a science fair?"

He showed Hank the picture of Parker standing next to a grow-light and several potted plants of different heights. His grandfather nodded, grunting his approval as he squinted and focused on the image.

"Temperance helped him, didn't she? It sure as hell couldn't have been Rebecca."

No-not Rebecca, _and sure as hell not me_, Booth thought. He'd barely been able to help his son with fourth grade math.

It was always Bones, treating Parker with the same devotion and attention she lavished on her own kids, helping him with just about every difficult school subject and project there was. If not in person when his son was staying at their house, then through facetime on the computer.

As if he needed one more reason to be completely crazy about the woman he'd married.

"She did," Booth said softly, sporting a wistful smile. "He's getting his medal next weekend at a big dinner in some convention center in Roanoke."

"You going, right?" Pops asked, staring down his grandson with his piercing blue eyes, as precise and unwavering as those of a hawk circling its prey.

"Yeah," Booth nodded slowly. "If you're doing good, I'll go."

That answer clearly didn't make the grade as far as the old man was concerned.

"Doing good, not doing good, you're going" he commanded in his sternest voice, no longer quite as thin and insubstantial as it'd been a few minutes ago. "I never missed one of your things, not even those awful school concerts where you couldn't carry a damn tune to save your life. You listening?"

Booth stopped in his tracks, and looked at his grandfather sheepishly. He might be almost ninety, he might be sick and confined to a hospital bed, but Pops was still, without a doubt, _the_ boss.

"Sure Pops," he agreed without further argument. If Hank was really in bad shape, who'd make him go anyway? Why not unruffle some of Hank's feathers before he went back to work? "I'll be there with Parker. I'll even make a video for you. Hey, by the way, that reminds me; I took some pictures of Joseph's first birthday on my phone-we really missed you, especially Christine. She wanted us to save some cake for you. It's in the freezer for when you get out of rehab and you come over to the house. We'll put some candles on it, and the kids can go crazy all over again. And Bones is putting together a special book for you so you can show your lady friends back at the home; it'll make you even more of a chick-magnet than you apparently already are.

Hank laughed.

It was good to hear that deep, grizzled, familiar laugh again.

"I like that-the girls love looking at babies."

"I've got a bunch of them right here. Wanna see?"

Hank waved him over.

"Such a handsome kid. Good thing he takes after Temperance and not his dad," Pops kidded. "Actually son, he looks just like you when you were a baby. He'll be a lady killer when he grows up, with that smile of his and those big, brown eyes. Keep those grandkids coming, shrimp" he said, squeezing his grandson's forearm affectionately. "You and Temperance are doing a fine job with the production line. C'mon, more pictures."

Booth won the round without Hank even realizing there'd been one; the rest of the hour was spent looking at birthday pictures and talking about the party. And before Hank had the chance to start on the explosive second request again, the midday visit was over.

Booth thanked his lucky stars as he walked out of the ICU. At least now he had a couple more hours to think about what he was going to say if Hank brought the subject up again.

He wondered just how long he'd be able to keep himself away from the firing squad.


	10. Detour

_Shout out to Matt for catching a big boo boo; when I edited chapter 7, I accidentally replaced it with chapter 1. Thanks for letting me know!_

It was a great plan; a foolproof plan.

A missed celebration revisited-sort of-along with a very tangible, maybe slightly noisy reminder of good times ahead.

Besides, the whole thing was one hundred percent sincere, even if it _was_ designed to shamelessly tug at the old heartstrings along the way. And if that did end up happening as a result of his shenanigans?

Well, no harm done.

Dan was in on it, and so was Dr. Freeman, not that she knew about the ulterior motive behind the set up. It's just they couldn't do it without her blessing because there was absolutely no way to sneak two little kids into the ICU without what amounted to a gold-plated permission slip from one of the hospital's physicians. So Booth asked. Pulled her aside right after the end of the noon visiting hour, and pleaded his case using every trick in the book, including some that his wife might not be thrilled about.

Charm smile came to mind.

And Dr. Freeman said yes-five minutes max, and not inside the room. Just a wave from the window, and back down the elevator.

Not ideal, not the big production he initially wanted, but it would work.

Bones, who for some unknown reason was waiting for him by their front door when he came home that evening, had given him "the look" when he told her how he'd managed to convince Hank's doctor to let them bring the kids in tonight for a quick visit. The you're-under-the-magnifying-glass look that said she knew there was a whole lot more to the story that he wasn't sharing with her.

"You used proven sexually charged body language and conversational techniques to get her to grant you your request, didn't you?"

He looked horrified as he waived his hands in front of him. "No, no! There was no sexually whatever _anything_!"

"You flirted with her," she clarified cooly.

"No Bones-no; I just told her how it would make Pops happy."

The denial, Brennan quickly adjudged, was a bit too lukewarm to be given any serious consideration.

"You gave her the smile you always give me when you want something, you tipped your head to one side at an approximately 20 degree angle, and then you stared at her with a crease in your forehead to emphasize your desperation until she forgot all about the hospital's well-established regulations pertaining to children in the ICU. Quite naturally, she immediately gave in to your demands. She _is_ a female member of the species, after all. Am I accurately enumerating the sequence of events as they transpired?"

"I just told her it meant a lot to me-to us," he corrected, a micro-second too late to save himself.

"Ergo, you have now provided me with direct confirmation that you flirted with her until you got your way."

Brennan leaned back casually against the hallway table in order to observe Booth's confusion from a more comfortable vantage point. Seeing him squirm under her purposefully enigmatic gaze was giving her almost as much enjoyment as if she'd just discovered a previously unknown tribe in the mountains of Papua New Guinea.

Married life was turning out to be a great deal of fun.

"I wouldn't call it flirting. I only flirt with my wife" he replied, in a last-ditch effort to extricate himself from the oh-so tangled web he'd woven. Whatever made him think he could get one past her? Hopefully she was just yanking his chain, and he wasn't in too much real trouble.

"It's alright, Booth" she said benignly after letting a few seconds go by. She'd already gotten more than her share of jollies for the evening. "It was for a good cause. As long as you didn't have to resort to kissing her."

His jaw dropped open wide as he stammered defensively. "What! You think..."

"Kidding!" she said, grinning and pulling on his tie until his nose was mere millimeters from hers.

He took in the smiling deep blue eyes and the rosy cheeks, the soft fragrance of her shampoo, and his breath suddenly caught in his throat as he remembered all those times in the past when he would have given anything to be this close to her, to be within kissing distance of that incredibly tempting mouth, but was forced to keep his hands and lips to himself so that he wouldn't put their partnership in danger. It was a risk he hadn't been willing to take for years, and when he finally did take it, it ended in total disaster. And yet now, years later, she was the one reeling him in.

He couldn't deny that he was one hell of a lucky dude.

"I don't kiss anyone but my wife," he assured her in a low drawl.

His tone was golden and warm like fine aged whiskey, and now it was Brennan's turn to squirm. She certainly hoped the good doctor hadn't gotten even a small taste of what she was getting now when Booth had talked her into blatantly violating hospital protocol. She'd never been the jealous type, but now that she had Booth for what appeared to be 'til death do us part' and her ring was on his finger...she didn't know. Something had changed, something fundamental in her view of her relationship with her husband, and lately she found herself being much more possessive of him than she'd been when they weren't bound by legalities of any sort. Almost unnavigable, she thought, all the complexities that came with being in love.

But even though she felt like she'd suddenly lost the upper hand in this little game of theirs, she remained undeterred in her plans to move the evening forward, fast.

"So what are you waiting for" she replied coyly.

"Hmmm?"

"Kissing your wife."

It had been a while; so much stress, so little sleep, so many other things on their minds. And always talk of later. But she didn't want to wait any longer-she wanted him _now_. Had wanted him all day, and this tiny window currently open to them was probably the only opportunity they would have for who knew how long.

Sensing his wife so compliant, soaking in the heat of her body even more intensely now that he'd thrown his jacket on the floor, Booth felt like a man who'd been dying of thirst and hadn't known it until just now. An almost goner, suddenly, miraculously, given the opportunity to dive deep into a cool, sparkling oasis in the middle of the desert just in the nick of time. It's what Bones did to him-renewed him, revived him, made him feel like he could do anything, get past any obstacle.

His lips were on hers no sooner than the words reached his ears, and she pulled on his tie even harder in response. His arms went around her waist until they're bodies were as close as they could be given that they were both still dressed, and Brennan heard him grunt with satisfaction when she opened her mouth to him and the tip of her tongue brushed his.

It didn't matter that they were still in the hallway of their house, that their son was only taking a short nap, that Christine was just feet away watching My Little Pony oblivious to the inappropriate PG-13 display her parents were putting on while she sat cross-legged on the carpet.

Booth finally took a step back, looking ambushed-and thrilled. He didn't know what had gotten into her, but he wasn't going to complain.

"Wow, what was _that_ for? I may have to start flirting with other women more often if this is how you're gonna react."

"This has nothing to do with Dr. Freeman" she said slowly, undoing his tie. "It's been a long time since we had sex, and when we get back from the hospital we'll be too tired to have any, as we've been for the last several weeks." She looked at her watch. "We have exactly nineteen minutes."

"Nineteen minutes? What about Christine-I haven't even said hello" he replied, whispering as he peered into the living room to find his little angel in a tv coma. "And dinner, and..."

She dragged him up the stairs, motioning for him to be quiet.

"Dinner's in the oven, done in half and hour."

He had to admit that for the first time in more than three weeks, Washington General Hospital and it's army of doctors were no more than a blot on his personal horizon.

Four steps up.

"Joseph just went down for a nap-perhaps half an hour as well on that front."

They reached the landing.

"You can greet Christine when we're done-she's watching her favorite My Little Pony episode. It now has approximately eighteen," she glanced at her watch and shook her head in disappointment, "sixteen minutes left. The alarm is on, the windows and doors are locked, the latch on the oven is on."

"Sixteen minutes? Isn't that a little close?"

"Two minutes to take off our clothes and otherwise get ready, four minutes of foreplay, and eight minutes of actual sex, with a two minute safety cushion built in just in case."

"That's a lot of pressure right there."

"I'm certain that as a man, a man who hasn't had sex in over two weeks, sixteen minutes of being in bed with a naked, attractive and very willing female will be more than sufficient to guarantee an orgasm for you. While women typically require an average of 22 minutes from the start of overt romantic overtures until they experience a state of climax, I'm feeling highly motivated today. Rather fortunately for the two of us, I actually require very little foreplay."

"Really, and just what were you doing with yourself before I got home?" he asked with raised eyebrows.

"Reading to Christine, making dinner, and putting Joseph down for a nap."

He smiled. Poor Bones, she'd never quite gotten the hang of sexual innuendos.

She gave him a long, burning look while she unbuttoned the top couple of buttons of her shirt, gracing him immediately thereafter with a provocative peek at two of his favorite things in the whole world. Turns out he wasn't going to need that much foreplay either.

"And thinking of you," she added with a feral smile.

Then again, maybe she'd gotten the hang of the whole sexual innuendo thing after all.

Brennan looked at her watch again. "Fourteen minutes will be more than adequate."

"Fourteen! Holy..."

She shoved him into their bedroom with all her might and shut the door with a decisive 'thump'.


	11. In Search of Happy Endings

_Thanks to all for your very kind reviews-and to one of my super nice guest reviewers in particular, gracias por tus palabras tan amables; espero te guste este capitulo!_

Driving to the hospital with his wife and kids in the car, Booth was feeling great, relaxed and hopeful, like for once things were going just the way he wanted.

And did he already happen to mention that he felt great? The little surprise Bones had in store for him at home had completely knocked him off his feet, and it had been all the more amazing because it was so totally unexpected, just like everything about her. Fast and furious, but toe-curling, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants amazing.

So Joseph had woken up right when they were done, almost to the second, and there wasn't much time for post-sex canoodling, but they _were_ done-both of them, thank God. Although the thought occurred to him that maybe the Almighty should just be left out of this discussion entirely.

He made a discreet sign of the cross while Brennan wasn't looking to atone for mentioning those two disparate concepts in the same sentence.

Like red pasta sauce and a white dress shirt, sex and religion should probably never, ever mix.

Except for maybe in the Old Testament.

But as to the evening...as soon as she heard fussing in the next room, Bones put on a bathrobe and ran out to grab their son, bless her heart. For his part, he was too beat to move even an inch. How women could go on their merry way right after...well, _that_, he couldn't fathom. Because after he rolled off her, landing with an exhausted, sweaty thud on his side of the bed, _he_ wasn't capable of doing much more than breathing; it felt like he had fifty pound weights strapped to each of his arms and legs. Sure, he _could've_ gotten up if he absolutely had to, like if their house had suddenly caught on fire or if an intruder was breaking in through a window, but he was infinitely grateful to his girl for shouldering the kiddie burden this time around and giving him those few extra minutes to recover.

So he felt good; not just because of the little carnal rendezvous he'd just had with his beautiful, uninhibited wife, but because in less than half and hour, almost everyone he loved was going to be under his watchful tutelage even if it was only for five minutes.

And because there was no way that this whole DNR nonsense was going to come up ever again after this visit.

"You said Max is meeting us in the parking garage? You positive about that? Because he's not like the most reliable person on the planet, Bones."

"Yes, he assured me he would be there. Apparently he's finally returned from whatever fictitious vacation locale he maintains he was at. He'll go up with us and then he'll take the kids back home after their brief visit so that we can stay with Hank for the remainder of the hour."

Brennan no longer made any type of effort to believe whatever tepid stories her dad chose to tell her about where he was at or whom he was with when he was out of her sight. He was almost always there when it really mattered, and while she realized he wasn't exactly the standard bearer for model fatherly behavior, she'd come to accept that what he was was good enough. He simply wasn't a conventional dad and would never be, but she wasn't exactly a conventional daughter, either, so it all worked out. Besides, she didn't require that kind of stability from her father-hadn't for a long time. She only needed his love and support, which he willingly gave.

Everything else, including rock-solid reliability, she could get by simply reaching over to her partner and kissing the daylights out of him.

As he fought the last of the rush-hour traffic, Booth still wore a look of post-coitus contentment on his face that gratified Brennan. She was glad that given all that could have gone wrong in the span of a little under twenty minutes in a household with two young children, her pre-dinner scheme had worked out so satisfactorily. With as little "them" time as they'd had since Hank fell ill, she fervently believed it was vital for her and Booth to reconnect on the most basic level whenever and wherever they could, which had not so long ago included a forgotten storeroom in the Jeffersonian conveniently overlooked by the people in charge of setting up the institution's video surveillance system. Booth had initially objected to the romantic overtures taking place in the cramped, dusty room, which he emphasized was located not only within the same building were she worked, but where a huge number of dead bodies were stored, but his concerns over propriety and his respect for the wrongfully departed hadn't lasted long. Once her bare, heavy breasts were in his hands and her moist breath was skimming over his Adam's apple, her husband's reticence had pretty much disappeared. He was modest, but he was also easy.

She liked having sex with Booth, she thought, as she turned her head away so her husband wouldn't catch her smiling.

Liked it a lot.

Not just because it was a highly pleasurable activity in and of itself, but because of how close she felt to him when they were naked and vulnerable in each other's arms, even if today that closeness had only lasted for a little under fourteen minutes.

Quickies, Booth called them. Apparently, sexual intercourse which took place in under fifteen minutes was considered a quickie in popular culture.

Well, quickies were certainly better than no quickies. And if any two people could pull one off exceptionally well, it was the two of them, she mused with pride.

"So when did Christine start watching My Little Pony?" Booth asked, turning to Brennan with a hidden smile in his eyes.

"I love liddle pony" their daughter piped up. "I'm gonna be Twilide Spakle for Halloween."

"When I realized that I couldn't possibly prepare dinner for us, feed _your_ children and look at all the materials coming from Christine's school before you got home" she threw back, only mildly irked by Booth's self-satisfied, know-it-all look. "The logistics of handling so many chores at once on my own proved to be quite challenging, and I was finally forced to rely on an outside source of distraction for our very active, highly inquisitive daughter. Besides, all her friends at preschool watch it" she mumbled under her breath, hoping Booth hadn't caught that final, horrid admission.

"Aha," he said triumphantly. "I knew you'd cave in to peer pressure eventually."

"The program happens to foment laudable moral values, such as camaraderie and empathy. Its central premise is the idea that 'friendship is magic,' which you should find extremely appealing given your intrinsic love of fantasy. While I find that it reinforces far too many antiquated female stereotypes, those drawbacks still don't make it objectionable enough for me to keep her from watching it. I'm confident that as her mother, the example which I, a rational person who generally eschews frivolity of any type, will be setting for her at home will more than counteract any negative gender-based messages she receives from a single television show."

"I love mommy" Christine chirped, awed into near-silence by her mother's formidable vocabulary.

"I love you too, Christine," Brennan replied in a far less formal tone.

Booth watched the exchange in silence, a mischievous spark flaring up in his dark eyes.

"You couldn't resist giving in to her when she asked, could you."

"No more than Dr. Freeman could resist you when you batted your eyelashes at her" she retorted.

Touché.

They both chuckled, and then Brennan sat back in her seat, growing introspective as the hospital came into view.

"Booth, whatever gave you the idea of asking whether we could bring the kids along to see Hank? You already knew the hospital's strict policy on children in the ICU" she said, giving him a sidelong glance.

His face immediately lost some of its former openness.

"Nothing. Why?" he asked, suddenly sounding tense and even a bit hostile. "Can't a guy take his kids see their great-grandfather at the hospital? Christine misses him, don't you muffin?" he finished off in baby talk, side-stepping what he knew was at the heart of his wife's question.

He looked in the rearview mirror and saw his daughter's toothy grin.

"Don't ya, sugar bear?"

"Wanna see Pop Pop. He's got a boo boo, right, daddy?"

"Yeah, sugar. But he's getting better every day, and when he sees you and your little brother, he's going to feel even better. As soon as he gets out of the hospital, I'm bringing him by the house and we can blow out candles and eat cake all over again. You'd like that right?"

"Yeah!" agreed Christine with a gleeful yell. "More cake!"

Joseph squealed along with his sister, although it was unlikely he understood what they were talking about, beyond perhaps the word 'cake.'

"He'll love 'My Little Pony'," he said, winking at Brennan.

"You realize that you can't promise her any of that, Booth" Brennan warned in a low voice, careful not to let their daughter hear. Christine was so much like Booth, so willing to believe and to trust and to have an almost too open of a heart. And just like her dad, so easily bruised when things she dreamt about weren't able to come true, like a real horse from Santa Claus for Christmas. She wanted more than anything for their child to stay that innocent and hopeful forever, but she knew that life would inevitably end up scouring some if not most of that sense of wonder and of endless possibilities away, just like one day she would probably make fun of the syrupy sweet and overly optimistic television show she now loved.

Brennan hated raining on Booth's parade, metaphorically speaking, but she also didn't want either her husband or her daughter to get so caught up in their own enthusiasm over Hanks' apparent improvement that it hurt them even more if the ailing man's journey took him out of their reach. As much as it pained her to bring the festive tone of the evening down a notch, she felt it was her duty as someone who loved them both to infuse a sense of reality into the situation; to remind her partner in particular that nothing about Hank's recovery was set in stone.

"Don't-don't do that, Bones" Booth begged almost tearfully, boring his eyes into hers as they pulled into the hospital's parking garage. "Just let me enjoy tonight, okay? I _really_ need this."

"Okay," she agreed quietly, upon hearing the sadness which lately was never far away from her mate's voice. Once Booth pulled into a spot and turned off the car's ignition, she reached out and touched his forearm to get his attention.

"I'm sorry. I know that sometimes I should really refrain from voicing my opinion until I consider the negative effects it might have on the listener. I'm used to speaking my mind at work, where candor is an absolute necessity, but I realize that kind of behavior isn't always socially appropriate once I leave the lab. I didn't mean to upset you, Booth."

"No-don't ever hold anything back-not from me; you're perfect the way you are. And a lot of times I need to hear the stuff, even when I don't want to. Just not tonight, though-please? Let me believe everything's going to turn out good."

He looked so heart-rendingly forlorn, it made her wish she could take back each and every one of those earlier cautionary words.

"Everything _is_ good," she said, forcing herself to smile brightly. "Tonight, everything is perfect."

The superficial sense of ease that had buoyed them earlier returned slowly, albeit a little more subdued, and Booth laced his fingers through hers, silently thanking her for her support.

"Talking about everything being good, look who's here already" Booth remarked, watching Max get out of his car with his trademark shuffle. "Wonder what souvenir he got the kids off ebay this time?"

They both laughed openly at Max's mystery-shrouded habits, and with that inside joke-which left Christine asking her parents "what? Why are you laughing?" about a dozen times in a row-the unorthodox celebration at the ICU got underway.


	12. Lines in the Sand

A foolproof plan.

A plan that had to work-that _would_ work, because other than sharing his life with Bones and his kids, little else had mattered this much to Booth in a very long time.

After showing the appropriate documentation at the ICU's front desk, the three adults walked towards Hank's room with the two kids in tow. Booth was carrying Christine; as they passed Mr. Jasinski's room, the little girl unerringly noticed the sleeping man still attached to a ventilator, for no other reason than her dad tried really hard for her not to.

"Is that Pop Pop?" she asked in a hushed, fearful voice.

"No bunny. That's not Pops. He's in another room. This person's very old; a lot older than Pops. Don't look-it's not polite."

"Why?"

"Because it isn't," Booth answered with the universal edge of irritation parents feel when their children press for answers they don't want to give.

"Is he gonna die and go to heaven?"

"Everyone is going to die, Christine," Brennan offered when Booth remained tight-lipped. "It's the ultimate fate of every living organism. For human beings, a systemic breakdown of the body begins at approximately age 45..."

Christine was looking at her mother with her big blue eyes, just waiting for whatever amazing, sometimes scary but mainly unintelligible piece of information the woman she adored was going to give away today, like a sprinkling of fairy dust from a wand or those soft footballs that her daddy threw her way that made her yelp with excitement. But Booth intercepted her mom's certain-to-be-a-touchdown pass and her magic dust and replaced it with some of his own.

"People only die when they're really, really old, Christine" he said, giving his wife one of his sternest looks to date.

"Older than Pop Pop?"

"Oh yeah" he said, still looking right at Brennan's disbelieving face. "Lots older. Like a hundred years old. And when that happens, yes, then they go to heaven and look out for us from there."

Brennan rolled her eyes, making absolutely no attempt to hide her dismay.

"Like angels?"

"Exactly like angels" Booth replied with a rebellious glare, practically taunting his wife into contradicting him in front of their audience. Brennan immediately turned to Max hoping to get some moral support from him on this stalemate, but when her dad nudged her with a nod and a wink to just go with the outré explanation, she remained quiet and kept walking down the hallway with a sleeping Joseph in her arms. Every once in a while she forgot just how differently she and Booth viewed the world; their children, however, were now an almost constant reminder of the metaphorical lines in the sand they had each drawn for themselves. Of course they would sort things out and compromise eventually; they always did.

Not without some fiery debates far from the kids' ears first, though.

"And here we are, right by great-grandpa's room; you guys be real quiet while I go in and see how he's doing. And then you know what to do, right Christine?"

"Right, daddy."

They shared fist-bumps, and Booth smiled with pride when he saw that his daughter was finally getting the hang of the old family tradition.

"I worry about him," Brennan whispered to her dad as soon as her husband disappeared. "These stories..."

"People have been telling all sorts of stories to their kids for a long time, honey. They don't do any harm. Eventually we find out that some of them aren't true in the way that we thought and sometimes it hurts a little, but we all get by."

Since Christine was busy smiling and waiving at the nurses by the station, Brennan felt free pursuing the topic of Booth's recent behavior with her dad.

"But he keeps sidestepping the truth in favor of what he wants, and I'm concerned that there will be _real_ harm done."

"To the kids? Nah, Tempe. They're too little-they don't even know what's happening."

"Not to our children, dad, to Booth. I'm concerned he actually believes what he's saying, specifically about Hank, and I'm afraid it will hurt him exponentially more if conditions suddenly change and his grandfather's health deteriorate beyond the point of recovery."

"Then you'll be there to help him through it, honey. Maybe he won't let that happen right away because God knows your husband is a stubborn man, but eventually he will. You're each other's rocks."

"Rocks? We're people dad. People who feel pain and disappointment, particularly Booth when it comes to anything that has to do with his family."

"Rocks in the sense that you support each other; that when one of you is flailing, the other gives that person strength."

"Booth is an extremely private person. Even with me, he has a hard time putting his feelings into words. His difficult childhood sometimes still causes him to take refuge in a world of make-believe, especially when things don't align with his view of what they should be; it's his survival mechanism, just like rationalizing everything when I feel threatened is mine. The way he sees it, if he pretends everything is alright, then it is. I'm not sure I'll be able to help him through this if Hank's condition declines precipitously. I'm afraid he'll close himself off, and push me away. It may be a very long time before I can reach him."

"It can't be that bad, honey" Max said, attempting to calm his distressed daughter down.

"I'm speaking from personal experience, dad. I've seen him do it before, when his father died and later, when his mom came back. This situation with Hank could be much worse; Booth worships his grandfather."

Booth's head emerged out of the doorway of Hank's room, and he gave them all a thumbs up-their two-minute warning-before he went back inside the room. Brennan saw his unguarded smile, big and warm like Christine's on Christmas morning, and she looked at her dad dolefully.

"What if I can't help him?"

"You will, honey. Trust me, you will."

"How do you know that?"

Max smiled.

"Because I know you, I know how incredibly persistent you are when something matters to you, and I know how much Booth loves you."

Brennan seemed doubtful.

"Believe me, when the time is right, you won't have to do a thing, because _he_ will come to _you_. You're his shelter, Tempe; he always comes back to you."

If it could only be that simple.


End file.
